The Songless Bird
by Sapphirine
Summary: "I was free, free, free at last, but was it ever meant to be?" Raven's heart has been broken by sorrow as she stands, hunched in the white asylum room. The heroine who had saved Jump so many times is alone and unloved. Takes place right before Starfire comes in S2E1 How Long is Forever? focusing on Raven's emotions and thoughts in the asylum. One-shot. Bad summary, story is better!


_{Disclaimer- Disclaimers, they taunt me. They laugh in my face I DON'T OWN TEEN TITANS. It's depressing. Truly._

_Neither do I make halfpence off this._

_So, with that out of the way, here I go... please read and review!}_

**_I am a swallow, a blackbird, a raven in flight._**

**_I once sang on the light breeze, danced in the light._**

Raven shivered as a whispering, capricious wind made her greyed, violet hair shimmer in front of her face with a forgotten luster. _No- it wasn't the wind. _she told herself sadly, reaching a hand up to brush it away before letting her hand drop to her side. _It's just the AC on too far._

It had been days, weeks, months, even years since she had last felt the wind on her face, soared in the sky, relished the warmth of the sun beating down on her skin. Twenty years, to be exact. Not that she missed it. Now, all it was to her was a strand-spitting bother, a scorching, skin cancer causing heat. The sun was the same as the glaring spotlights in her white-walled, nondescript room where time did not matter, that today was the same as yesterday. These accursed lights shone with a stark, unloving brightness, which reflected blindingly off the smooth, dirty linoleum floor. The birds of the sky was like the black, fat flies buzzing incessantly around the flickering, sparking lights which had been broken as of Year Two.

**_Cursed be those places which clip my wings._**

_**Cursed be those places which silence the bird who sings.**  
_

Raven did not try to remember, in her delirious, confused mind. She had long since banished her colorful doppelgangers away, every last pesky emotion. They only served to confuse her bedraggled and tattered mind further. Now she stood, hunched over, in miserable silence. Unable to feel happiness, unable to feel joy, unable to feel love, unable to feel peace. The only emotions that had slipped unknowingly into her desolate mind were the grey and red emotions. Timid and Angry. Social-withdrawal and Hatred. A perfect description of her current state.

People had visited her frequently in the beginning, pitying fans that had flocked to see and comfort the poor former heroine. You could label them as ultimate, abyssal, most epically epic failures on the latter part. Eventually, the number of visitors climbing up the five flights of grungy, creaking, groaning stairs had thinned into nonexistent. People stopped pondering, worrying, the name "Raven Roth" fading into nothing in their memories as they went on their daily, happy business, skipping around Jump City like she never existed.

**_For I am free, soaring with the flocks of my brothers and sisters, forever free.  
_**

_**But when I think of this manacled life, I remember. For at least, I used to be.**  
_

The door creaked open, unoiled, neglected hinges screaming their throats out. Raven didn't turn around, and stayed, rooted to the spot, eyes downcast, in a miserable, white-cloaked huddle. Something was set inside the greasy threshold of the room, and the door swung slowly closed, hinges shrieking out a mournful, hopeless dirge as it closed with a fatal boom again, shutting the girl inside away from the sunlit world beckoning outside.

She knew what it was. A plastic glass of unfiltered, muddy water with a couple suspiciously furry-looking insects struggling in it, drowning as they waved around their countless legs in a wild, desperate dervish as they died, floating belly-up in the water. A greyish blue and green slice of jagged bread, mold growing all over it like the hair on Starfire's head, on an unwashed, white plastic tray.

**_The cage holds me in, away from the glowing light,_**

_**Into the darkness, the shadows, the sordid, the melancholy, the endless night.**  
_

Starfire- one of her friends, she meant, her _former _friends. Who had abandoned her, languishing in her hole not decent for a sewer rat's rotting corpse. The familiar, dull yet overwhelming anger swept up in her like an incoming tsunami, flooding out all her senses as she saw the world in red, her eyes splitting into two rows of two, murderous vermilion eyes, stacked on top of each other, furious, demonic slits.

_They will pay. _Raven snarled. _They will. I will get my revenge._

Almost immediately, a rush of sadness made her head droop further, shoulder sagging, her steely rage dissipating into evaporated nothingness, drifting away like a wisp of smoke snatched away, trampled underfoot by a harsh, howling winter gale.

_They-they are gone. Like everyone else. Like everything else. And I am alone. Always, forevermore alone, in this white room of nothingness and despair. _she moaned quietly, a tear sliding down one pale, gaunt cheek.

**_My friends, the other spirits of the sky,_  
**

_**What have they become? Where are they now while I burn in this consuming hatred of mine?**  
_

Her past life seemed like a dream, a meaningless, yet so painfully meaningful memory. It made her hurt to try to forget, and yet it tormented her so much more to remember. And yet she could not forsake them, forsake her memory of them. Even though they had so coldly, so ruthlessly forsaken her.

Life- it was so unfair, it hurt so much. So much more than her weak, feeble frame could take. For all this grief, all this pain, she had left her entire life.

And she knew it would continue all the way until she drew her last breath.

When would that blessed moment be?

**_I cry out, my soul cries out to be set free, to fly away, out_**

**_Without these horrible, burning chains that scar my heart with hope without  
_**

She finally understood. Her life had been short, unhappy. Cursed, meaningless.

But perhaps the time behind would be more free?

She gathered herself together, almost drifting toward the tray swiftly. The predicted bread and water sat there starkly, along with the key to this task- a knife. Not just a butter knife, but a sharp dagger, steel blade gleaming.

This was the asylum's way of staying in business. Give psychotics a blade, they'll probably kill themselves, and no one will know. That's one less mouth to feed, which equals to one less cost to keep the poor guy in. Besides, didn't they hate life? Why not just make them happy?

It was cruel, she reflected, but necessary. And thank Azar they kept it up, or else her freedom would be stolen forever.

Ignoring the food, she stooped down, picked up the knife, and drifted back to the center of the room. There was no one watching but her stark shadow, echoing her movements on the peeling, ancient, whitewashed walls.

She gripped the handle of the dagger firmly, and closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath, letting it out in a shaky, choked exhalation. She didn't regret it. She vowed to herself she never would.

Before she could change her mind, she plunged it into where her broken, tormented heart would be.

A fresh flow of crimson blood spurted out from the wound, running down her leotard, leaving a dark trace on the old fabric. She made no move to stop it, and watched, emotionless, as the flow increased, widened, until her heart had driven out the blood from her veins.

Gasping, she fell to her knees, pressing her hand against her stomach, squeezing her eyes in the agony, the pain. But a curious sense of euphoria overwhelmed her.

_It will all be over soon, _she whispered to herself, with a joy she had not tasted in two decades. _All over, the pain will be gone. Gone forever!_

She swayed as the stream lessened, waned as stars began to shine before her eyes, the lights fading to pinpricks of light.

_All over._

But she couldn't bring herself to believe it as the tiniest hint of remorse flowed through her, guilty for what grief she had dealt shamelessly to others. So selfishly.

But it was too late as the world collapsed into darkness. A single word lingered in her mind.

_Free._

Then as her vision faded forever into darkness, she caught a scream and a purple figure running in from the hallway.

_Starfire? _she wondered, before she slumped to the ground, eyes closing for the last time.

_**I was free, free, free at last**_

_**The bars of the cage meant nothing to me  
**_

_**But as the darkness faded into nothing, I wonder  
**_

_**Was this really meant to be?  
**_


End file.
